


Until the Day I Die

by wickersnap



Series: Of the things I have to tell you [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: (rip Boga :( ), Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mutual Pining, Order 66, Post-Order 66, Pre-Slash, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Uncle Cody, it's not fully canon divergent I'm sorry, though we do get the best version of cody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickersnap/pseuds/wickersnap
Summary: “Blast him!” orders CC-2224.The AT-TE stationed a mere few paces behind him aims, primes, fires.The Cody of General Kenobi’s 212th Battalionscreams.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Luke Skywalker, CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Riyo Chuchi/CC-1010 | Fox
Series: Of the things I have to tell you [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899607
Comments: 17
Kudos: 239





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I butcher the Mando'a,, I am _so, so_ sorry.  
> I'm not good at picking up languages without explicit demonstrations/examples of grammar and usage to demonstrate the patterns. I tried, though!  
> (Also posting schedule changed to Tuesday/Wednesday because if I wait any longer I feel like I'm going to vibrate out of my skin!!)

CC-2224 watches in muted, echoingly distant horror as the cannon artillery explodes against the dusty yellow patchwork of the cliff’s sheer face. The varactyl screams her death throes as she tumbles gracelessly into the depths of the canyon, the glowing blue spear of a lightsaber vanishing as her rider slips from her harness.

_ “We’ve got a battle to win, here.” _

CC-2224 wonders why. Wonders what could possibly warrant such a reaction. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi is a traitor to the Galactic Republic, and CC-2224’s orders are clear: eliminate any threat, by any means necessary.

And Good Soldiers Follow Orders.

Some defective, buried part of his mind screams at him.

_ Obi-Wan Kenobi, a traitor? _ It howls.

Of course he is a traitor. He’s a Jedi. Not only that, but a Master of the Jedi Council. And the Jedi are traitors to the Republic.

_ Or’dinii! Hut’uun! _

If this defection doesn’t sort itself soon, he’ll need to be sent in for reconditioning.

_ Usenye, chakaar! Tion’gar mirsh solus? _

Well, someone doesn’t like him very much.

Far, far below in the canyon basin, two forms hit the placid green lake waters with a tidal wave of a crash.

Obi-Wan.

_ Obi-Wan! _

Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi traitor.

_ Says fucking who! _

Says the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, di’kut.

…Hm? But why? Why now?

_ Yes, why now? _

Because Obi-Wan Kenobi is the traitor—

_ Obi-Wan Kenobi is the most dedicated Jedi you have ever met. _

A sudden wash of unbidden emotion overwhelms CC-2224. He staggers under the weight of it, swaying and pushing the heel of his palm against his bucket. Pain, he thinks. Pain is the most glaring, demanding his attention like a physical wound. Hurt-shock-disbelief-love- _ no-why-how-could-I _ comes next, each individual element simultaneously melding with the others and vying for his attention. But it’s still the pain that’s most pressing.

“Sir!” 

“Sir, are you all right?”

“Marshal Commander, sir!”

CC-2224, however unwisely, falls to his knees. He’d stepped toward the edge of the platform to follow Kenobi’s descent personally, in the hopes of confirming death by visuals. Now his knees dig into the edge of their perilous outcropping, his hands clutch at the unforgiving inch-thick helmet over his throbbing head, and unstable debris crunches loudly between plastoid and ferrous bulkhead.

Ahead, there is nothing. Behind, and there is the battle, the war, the death and the destruction. 

Ahead is his General.

“SIR!”

CC-2224 feels himself tipping. His thoughts are sluggish, unresponsive—unable to keep up with the whys and hows and consequences of the sensations, only the whats.

And the whats are that he’s falling. Falling, plummeting, straight down towards the blue-green depths. A colour, he thinks, not dissimilar to the sparkle in his General’s eyes at the hatching of a good plan.

He hits the water hard. Sound rushes his external sound receptors in a choking, gurgling churn, deafening him from the outside world. Insulating him. It’s just him, alone, hanging like a ragdoll in the water. 

CC-2224 in his armour. 

Sinking. 

He doesn’t know how long passes before he feels hands clutch the undersides of his arms. He doesn’t know how long it takes for those same hands to haul him through this syrupy resistance, this nothingness that isn’t a void—no, they’ve spent too long in actual space to make that mistake—but something like it. Buoyancy. Peace. Serenity. 

Death, after too long.

“Oh no, not today, my dear,” says a voice closer to his ear than he was expecting.

Cody jerks, fingers scrabbling at the slimy wet rocks under him. He flails so hard he almost falls; he would have, if he hadn’t been caught once more by those two strong, cradling hands. Hands he’s sure he would know anywhere, even without the endless acumen of that spice-warm voice.

_ “General,” _ he breathes. His helmet is gone. He lifts a hand to his temple, briefly, wondering at how the raging pain has so easily retreated to just a dull, persistent ache. And then he scrambles to sit up and face the owner of those coveted hands.

Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi smiles at him, sodden and perched on a rather ungainly rock, and still manages to look beautiful doing it.  _ No, that shouldn’t be a surprise. _ Obi-Wan Kenobi is  _ always _ beautiful, no matter the shit he goes through. But then, now that Cody has established himself as purveyor of that shit, he certainly should not be smiling like that. Not at  _ Cody. _

Cody.

“General!” Cody says again. “How did you—what are—why—I can’t—”

“Slow down, Cody,” General Obi-Wan gentles. He leans forward and strokes a hand across Cody’s cheek, and if Cody had better control over himself or his sense of morality, he’d be flinging himself backwards and yelling ‘Run, save yourself!’. But as it is, he doesn’t, and so he leans into that hand and lifts one of his own to trail rough, gritty neoprene down the backs of those sturdy fingers. Fingers that twitch and curl over the slant of his cheekbone. Carefully, so carefully in fact, that Cody thinks he might break.

“Why did you save me?” he asks in a thin, weak and straining voice. The back of his throat burns under the threat of messy, embarrassing sobs that build hot in his chest. “Why?”

“Why wouldn’t I, dearest?” Obi-Wan answers. He slips off the rock and to his knees, bringing his face so unbearably close to Cody’s own. “I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I didn’t. Not you. Not after everything.”

Cody squeezes his eyes shut and chokes back the tears. “I’m sorry,” he whimpers. “I’m so sorry, I’m  _ so sorry. _ How can you look at me, General? How?”

“Because I know, Cody, that that wasn’t truly you.” Gentle, rough-padded thumbs swipe hot tears from each of his cheeks before they can fall any farther. “I felt it when I was in the water. There was a great shift in the Force, and suddenly tens of thousands of my brethren began crying out in pain and fear. Most of them… Most of them are gone, now, but I felt something else—a great emotional pain from Anakin, very,  _ very _ far away on Coruscant. Crossing that distance shouldn’t be possible for any Jedi, even him at his strongest. Something, my dear, is deeply, gravely wrong in the universe.”

Cody inhales shakily and tries to nod. His vision is unreliable and watery, though he’d never mistake his General’s smile. Not for anything. Not even if they took both of his eyes clean from their sockets.

“Whatever it was… Whatever you did, General, I owe you my life.”

Obi-Wan breathes a tiny laugh through his nose. “Come now, I’m sure I’ve still a lot of life debts to make up for.”

_ None, _ Cody thinks vaguely, even while he loses himself in the warmth of his favourite person in all the galaxy. None, because he has held Cody’s life dear in the palm of his hand since the moment he stepped into it.

“We need to get off this planet,” he whispers into the small space between them. His brothers will be looking for them. They’ll kill them on sight. Even if they don’t kill Cody, he’ll be reconditioned until he’s either unrecognisable or dead the long way around. Whatever the General did, he won’t be able to do it to the entire battalion, and Cody isn’t willing to let him even think about trying it anyway.

“Grievous had a ship,” Obi-Wan muses. “It’s quite a long way up, but… Do you think you can manage the climb? I can help you, needs be.”

Cody leans out from under the small outcropping of rock to gaze up the looming, precarious canyon wall. He tests his arms, his legs, his hands and feet and fingers in turn. “I can make it,” he says. “But we’ll have to be careful.”

Obi-Wan smiles and strokes Cody’s cheek one last time, leaning in to press their foreheads together in a kiss that nonetheless leaves Cody  _ breathless. _

“When have I ever  _ not?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aka, welcome to part two, where Cody and Obi-Wan get to be dramatic lovelorn fools at each other!!  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you missed it, part 3 of the series has been posted! The following chapter will make a _lot_ more sense if you read that first (it's not too long, if that sort of thing puts you off!)  
> Now, I figure I owe you all a reprieve from the heartbreak :)

Cody sits at the side of his brother’s bed as he sleeps, one hand running through his grey-streaked curls. Across from him, his other brother’s sweetheart lies prone and heavily pregnant on another bed, hooked up to innumerous monitoring machines in an attempt to assuage everyone’s gnawing anxiety.

Cody wonders how exactly it is that they’ve ended up here.

Fox twitches beneath his hand. Cody slides his fingers down to stroke across his cheek, smiling wryly when another lethargic and ineffective hand swipes at him.

“Hm?” Fox groans. “What time’sit?”

“Hey to you too, asshole,” Cody says. He takes the plastic water cup from the bedside and offers it to Fox as he drags himself up, blinking and blinking at the grit between his eyelids.

“K’te?” he mumbles. “Fuck, wha’s going on?”

Cody waits until he’s taken a few gulps of water to press a ration bar into his hands, lest Teal kill him for letting their brother starve. “We’re still in hyperspace, headed for some kind of medical facility for the Senator. We’ve been back to Coruscant already. The Generals are putting together a plan of action from here on out.”

“Shit, w’s I really out that long?” Fox asks around a mouthful of protein dust. Cody raises an eyebrow.

“General Kenobi tells us you’ve had at least a year’s worth of heavy suggestion and manipulation layered on your psyche. He also said Skywalker’s field fix was violent and imprecise, out of necessity we’re sure, and that it _will_ take time to heal. General verdict is that you’re on bedrest until we’re out of the ’lanes and then restricted duty until we know you won’t kill yourself just standing up too long.”

Fox grunts and scowls down at the empty wrapper in his hands.

“And it’s not because we don’t trust you,” Cody continues, softer. “We know you, _I_ know you, and we all know that it was that karking Sith Lord fucking with your head. You’re still our Commander Fox, just that you’ll be tied down to the bed if you try to overexert yourself any time soon.”

“Noted.”

Cody allows them to lapse into silence. Fox folds the wrapper absently, compulsively, twisting it into squares smaller and smaller until the rip in the cellophane tears wide between his fingers.

“Your Senator’s sweet,” he says eventually. Fox stills and flicks his eyes up to him as if expecting Cody to take the piss. “She was in here for ages with you. Organa had to drag her out to get some sleep of her own, and she only agreed when I said I’d take her place.” Fox’s lips twitch up, just barely. “She’s cute. Clearly loves you a lot. I’m glad you have someone like that, you know. We all thought you were just going to drink yourself into a grave, at one point. Thorn was—” Cody sighs. “Thorn was talking about staging an intervention if it got any worse.”

“I know,” Fox says. The look in his eye is fond and amused and slightly far away. “He was a good one. And yeah… I don’t deserve her. Never have.” He spends another few moments fiddling, tucking one half of the wrapper into the other and then switching them. “Thank you, Cody. And thank you for looking after Riyo, too.”

Cody scoffs. “You were my batcher before she was your girlfriend. Can’t leave my ori’vod to expire alone, can I?”

“Yeah, yeah, look after your poor ori’vod, kid. Respect your elders.”

“Oh, now I _know_ you’re all right. We’re the same age, di’kut.”

“I’m still older.”

“Barely.”

“No, no, it definitely counts. Best hour of my life that was, before the rest of you and that fucking wild beast came along.”

Cody deflates slightly at the thought of Wolffe, out there in the galaxy without them. Fallen to the chip, more likely than not. Not to mention the others. _Fuck,_ the—

“But never mind that,” Fox says suddenly, smile turning the sort of sharp and feral he and Bly had always shared. “Tell me about you and _your_ darling boyfriend, yeah? He saved you, didn’t he? Just like the damsel in distress.”

“He’s not my _boyfriend,”_ Cody grouses. “He is my General, and nothing is going to come of that. You know this.”

“Ahh, but does he? For all your lovesick puppy act, he seems to have a fairly good one of his own, you know? Oh wait—that’s right—you _don’t_ know, because you’re too kriffing blinded by your own pining!”

Cody swears under his breath and shoves his brother’s blanketed leg. _“This_ is why everyone hates you.”

“Oh come on,” Fox says gently, reaching up to ruffle Cody’s crop. “He adores you, you adore him. Everyone sees it, Kot’ika, except for the two of you. Match made in Manda, that is.”

Cody brushes his hand away. “Yeah right. I told you, he doesn’t want that.”

“Keep telling yourself that and you’ll never get him.”

“He had the Duchess.”

“And where was she all that time you were right there, being your adoring puppy self? No where to be seen, that’s where. _You,_ vod’ika, are clearly the superior choice, and we all know Kenobi’s not blind.”

“He’s a _Jedi.”_

“So’s Skywalker.” He leans in and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “So’s General Windu. But you didn’t hear what was up with him and our Ponds, did you?” At Cody’s alarmed, furrowed brow, he smirks like the dickhead he is and settles back into his pillow. “Didn’t think so.”

“Wow. No joke?”

“Nope.”

“Good evening, Commanders,” says a pleasant voice from the door to the infirmary. “Is everything all right?”

Cody jerks to attention, noticing Fox does too, furiously hoping that the General hadn’t been there long enough to hear their conversation. 

“General! Is there anything I can help you with?”

Obi-Wan smiles. “No thank you, Cody. I’ve just come to visit… Are you feeling any better, Commander Fox?”

“Much,” Fox agrees immediately. “Please, though, General, you’ve been in my head. Just Fox is more than enough.”

“Fox, then.” Obi-Wan nods, and wanders over to stand at the foot of Fox’s bed. “And I’m afraid none of us are Generals any longer. You’re very welcome to call me Obi-Wan.”

“I don’t know if I could, Master Kenobi.”

“Well, whatever you’re most comfortable with. I’ve been trying to get Cody to call me by name for years now, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”

Fox turns to Cody and raises him his infamous _‘oh indeed’_ eyebrows. Cody shoves his leg again and ignores the retaliating kick.

“You deserve the respect of the men, O-Obi-Wan,” Cody says petulantly. “Changing things could have upset the balance.”

Obi-Wan smiles again, running his hands over the rung of the gurney frame. “I understand, Cody. But I’m afraid you’ve rather run out of excuses.”

“So it seems.”

When Obi-Wan takes a moment to look over at Senator Amidala Cody watches his expression darken with worry, watches the tension begin to build in the set of his jaw and his shoulders all over again.

“The medics have done all they can to make her comfortable,” Cody says, though he’s sure Obi-Wan already knows. “It’s no condition for a pregnancy, but I think it’s the best we’ll get.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan agrees, though he sounds distant. “I just wish…”

“…I still can’t believe little Rex didn’t tell us,” Fox sighs wistfully. “Had to find out the same as the hologossip outlets.”

“No manners, that kid,” Cody mocks. “Didn’t find the time to tell us if they knew whose kid it is, either.”

Fox snorts. “I don’t really think they cared.”

“Rex?” Obi-Wan asks, turning curious attention back to them. “You’re talking about the Senator, yes?”

Fox tilts his head. “Yes?”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to pry, I just… Feel I’ve missed something.”

Cody looks from Obi-Wan to Amidala, and back to Obi-Wan. “Rex and General Skywalker, sir. We heard about the Senator’s good news over the holonet, so we were wondering why our brother didn’t tell us first, as family.”

“Oh,” Obi-Wan says. “Anakin would never tell me.”

“He always said you had enough to worry about,” adds a weak, gentle voice from the other bed. Obi-Wan startles, going to her side immediately and taking her hand in his. “Senator—”

“Padmé,” she corrects.

“Padmé, is there anything I can do for you? Get for you?”

She turns her head gingerly. “Is there any water?”

The three of them wait until Amidala has wet her mouth for her to speak again. She moves the hand still held in Obi-Wan’s to her grossly swollen abdomen and lies them both there.

“I’m so sorry to have left you out of this, Obi-Wan,” she says. “Truly, I am. We were just… We were all so scared. War is no time for children.”

It’s a start, Cody thinks, but unlike anyone else on this ship, he alone knows just how much Skywalker and Amidala’s, his best friends’—no, _brother’s_ secrecy had hurt his General. 

Obi-Wan’s fingers splay wide over her white cotton gown. He watches them for a moment, before dragging his eyes back up to meet hers. “This,” he says hoarsely. “This wasn’t… It wasn’t just you and Anakin, was it?”

Padmé glances Cody and Fox’s way before a small, remorseful smile graces her lips. “No, it wasn’t.”

“The Captain,” Obi-Wan says next, and Padmé’s fingers visibly tighten around his. 

“Where are they, Obi-Wan? Are they all right?”

Obi-Wan purses his lips for a brief moment. “The last they were seen was when Commander Fox saw them together in your apartments. I don’t know where they are, Padmé, but Anakin is still there. Our bond is still strong. He feels very far away, weakened, maybe. But he’s there.”

Padmé exhales a long and gentle breath, tension leaking slightly from her shoulders and falling back into the cradle of her pillows. Obi-Wan gasps, then, looking back to her pregnant belly in surprise. “They—is it—?”

“Yes,” she tells him, and when her eyes open again they glimmer with tears. “Yes, one of them.”

“One?” Fox blurts out. Cody digs him in the side.

Padmé beams at him. “Twins. Someone was hiding in the first scan we took.”

Cody watches Fox struggle with that information. His face really can conjure some interesting expressions. “That sounds… Inconvenient.”

“Apologies, ma’am, but we don’t know much about how, er, non-clones have ca—kids,” Cody says, and winces at his own ineloquence. Padmé only laughs, but winces when her back flexes.

“Yes, so I’ve heard, Commander. It’s been a steep learning curve for all of us, really—”

“Fox!” comes a squeak from the door. “You’re awake!” 

All four occupants turn to Senator Chuchi, who smiles apologetically before hurrying to throwing herself into Fox’s arms.

“Senator!” Fox flusters, and Cody snorts, loudly.

“Really?” Chuchi complains, giving him a look. “I’m sure Master Obi-Wan won’t mind.”

“Of course not,” Obi-Wan says, hiding a laugh the same as Padmé. Cody snickers again, and Fox scowls at him. 

“Shut up.”

“No.”

“I’m not taking shit from the one who refuses to admit—”

Chuchi presses her fingers over his lips, cutting him off. _“Fox,_ honestly. I’m so glad you’re looking well.”

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, and raises a hand to press kisses to her fingers. Something, somewhere in Cody’s chest, curls painfully into itself.

“Senator, you were supposed to be resting,” he sighs eventually.

Riyo smiles at him from across the bed. “You should rest too, Commander. Master Kenobi did tell us how you escaped, after all.”

Obi-Wan chuckles, and Cody meets his eyes while he gently brushes a strand of hair from Padmé’s temple. “I’m afraid she has you there, my dear.”

“Then, Obi-Wan, I must insist that you also need your rest. You’ve been awake for how many sleep cycles now?”

“Cody…” Cody holds his gaze for a long moment, knowing just how much his General wants to argue. He won’t, though, because he hasn’t a leg to stand on. He hasn’t rested since the last night shift before dropping into orbit above Utapau.

Chuchi clears her throat and perches herself properly on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry for my rude intrusion,” she says. “I was only meant to come down to tell you that we’ll be arriving at the station in a few hours. Bail wants to know if there’s anything you need, Padmé.”

Padmé smooths her hands over the gown covering her belly. “You can tell him to stop fussing, for a start—” she winces again, and flinches forward, “—though it’s probably a good thing we’ll be there soon.”

“Oh goodness! They’re not coming already?”

“Impatient, aren’t they?” 

Obi-Wan freezes, and Cody finally catches on.

“Ma’am!” he exclaims. “Surely there are things we need to help prepare for you?”

“Oh no,” she laughs, light and kind. “I have Threepio to assist me, you boys don’t need to worry at all.”

“Oh?” says the gleaming protocol droid folded into the seat by her bed, booting up for the first time since she’d been eased into sleep. “Did somebody say my name?”

“Oh, isn’t it wonderful?” Chuchi sighs, and her voice has a slightly wistful quality to it. She leans back against Fox’s chest and he lifts an automatic hand to cradle her.

“What is?” he asks.

Riyo beams at him. “The children, of course! She’s so happy to have them, I’m almost envious!”

No matter what other witnesses say, Cody didn’t laugh at his brother’s startled, slightly-green expression. He _didn’t._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally in love with their love. Ugh.
> 
> Cody: I've had my niece and nephew for all of 3 hours but if anything happened to them I would kill all of you in this room and then myself
> 
> ALSO the Padmé dies of ““heartbreak”” garbage... no thank you.   
> But I do apologise.
> 
> Part 4 (Roll the Dice) will be up next week!!

It had all been going so well up until the screaming started. Now, Cody feels like he has the galaxy’s worst case of whiplash ever recorded.

 _“Padmé!”_ Obi-Wan and Chuchi yell, muted inside the protected room. Cody rushes to the frosted observation glass, hearing a second light impact as Fox hits it just beside him. Padmé is screaming and shrieking, thrashing where her arms had been free to hold the General’s hand.

“Miss Amidala, Miss Amidala!” cries a droid. “You must calm down!”

Fox keys open the door, ignoring Organa’s protests, just in time for her to scream again and shout harrowingly.

“He’s here!” she sobs. “He’s found me!”

And Fox… Fox freezes in the doorway. Cody’s hand falling heavy on his shoulder has him lurching forward again, snapping out of his horror and dashing to the sides of the women he’s spent his life protecting.

“Who?” Obi-Wan implores.

Fox stands at his side, hands unsure and hovering. Padmé gasps through the pain and blinks tears from between her eyelashes, terrified. “Palpatine.”

Obi-Wan freezes for barely a moment before he sets his expression in grim determination. Chuchi glances worriedly between Fox and Padmé, smoothing hands over her hair and face in a desperate attempt to soothe her pain. Cody, out of his depth completely, feels truly helpless.

“Padmé, we need you to focus on the babies first,” Obi-Wan says. He sounds strained. “Can you do that?”

“Yes!” she says, breathless. “Yes, but he’s here, he’s here, he wants to—to take! To take them, me, everything!”

“Save your energy,” Obi-Wan tries. Cody moves into the gap between him and his brother, brushing fingers over the small of his back when he sees the white-knuckle grip he and the Senator have on each other.

“I can’t,” she gasps. “They either— _come now,_ or—or they don’t!”

Obi-Wan straightens into Cody’s touch and closes his eyes. The furrow between his brow deepens, near-permanent now, and everyone looks to him in the respite Padmé seems to have found.

“He does not know where we are,” Obi-Wan eventually admits, quietly. “He has found you, yes, I can feel the hold he had back on Coruscant straining. I can try my best to keep him away, but… But he does not know _where_ we are.”

Fox slumps into Cody’s side like a cut tension cord, exhaling his relief over the breast of his armour. For a moment there is silence; Padmé’s next screams have them all lurching with shock and fear.

“Ma’am!” Fox exclaims in a panic. _“Ma’am!”_

“Don’t give up, Padmé,” Obi-Wan murmurs. He brings their joined hands to his mouth and Cody’s heart _hurts._

* * *

The first child is tiny. The droid tries to hand it to Fox, who’s closest, but he backs quickly away with a desperate look of alarm and directs them to Obi-Wan. The small swaddle of blanket squirms and coos, waving one tiny, pudgy arm in the air. Cody and Fox move to the back of the room as Obi-Wan leans down to present the tiny new cadet to his mother.

“Luke,” Padmé says, barely a breath past her lips. “Oh, _Luke.”_

With strength she doesn’t look to have she raises an arm, trailing pale fingers down dark-ish, pinkened skin. Obi-Wan adjusts him in his arms as she watches in wonder.

“One more time, madam,” says the droid.

For all the times he’s watched brothers scream and die before his eyes, Cody can’t bring himself to watch the bizarre, grizzly scene he feels so wrongly privy to. The second child is equally small, given to Chuchi as she fusses beside the droid.

“A girl,” she murmurs in wonder, offering the little thing to Padmé just as Obi-Wan did. 

“Leia,” Padmé says. “She’s—ngh. Leia.”

Chuchi looks like she dearly wants to give the child over for her mother to hold her, but abruptly Padmé is convulsing again, overpowered by a piercing scream that disturbs both babies greatly. Obi-Wan starts as if to go to her but pauses at the reminder of poor Luke in his arms; he looks beseechingly to Cody, and, terrified, Cody holds out his arms.

Babies are small. Babies are light. 

Babies are absolutely, horrifyingly delicate.

Cody is holding a _baby._ He stares wide-eyed at his nephew and hastens to make sure he’s secure in his arms.

“Padmé, Padmé… Stay _with_ me, Padmé,” Obi-Wan is muttering, one hand pressed to her sweat-slick forehead and both eyes tightly closed in focus.

“Obi-Wan,” she says weakly. “Obi-Wan, please, listen…”

“Yes?”

Little Luke cries out and wriggles in Cody’s hold. His hand smacks lightly against the scratched plastoid of his chest piece, and Cody lifts one of his own to pull his glove off with his teeth before slipping it behind Luke’s head and shushing him quietly.

“Find my boys,” Padmé pleads. “Find… Rex and Anakin. Tell them what happened.”

Obi-Wan nods immediately. “I will, Padmé, I promise.”

“And please—” she chokes and screams, her free hand flying to splay weak fingers over her throat. “Please! Look after them. Don’t let Pal—” They look on in horror as she jerks and gasps wetly for breath, and Cody instinctively pulls Luke closer to his body. “Don’t let—him get them! _Obi-Wan!”_

Her eyes are wide in panic, her skin so pale it’s almost translucent scrabbling at her own throat, and her breaths are fewer and shallower with every second passed. There’s nothing Obi-Wan can do, and nothing Cody can even begin to think of to try to help her.

_“Padmé!”_

“Protect them,” she whispers through her invisible noose. “Prote… plea…se.”

She chokes and goes limp on the bed, unresponsive after one, final, vain attempt to struggle through. Chuchi watches in horror, clutching Leia where she’s wrapped in her blanket and tucked into one shoulder.

Obi-Wan is wordless. Wordless when he lets go of Padmé’s hand and steps back. Wordless when he turns unblinkingly to Cody and the baby, and wordless when he strokes a vacant thumb over the bridge of Luke’s tiny nose.

After a long, long moment of silence, Obi-Wan finally looks up at him to meet his eyes.

“She’s gone.”

She’s… 

“Gone,” Fox breathes.

“No,” Chuchi whimpers. “No, she can’t—”

Her knees give out, startling Cody and pulling a scratchy, wounded noise from Fox’s throat. 

_“Padmé!”_

The medical droid rolls up to Cody’s side and extends its arms. Cody looks from it to Obi-Wan and back, turning his body to shield Luke at the same time and glaring.

“I must take the child for its health examination,” the droid tells him impatiently. The tone only serves to make Cody clutch Luke closer, panicked, but Obi-Wan’s hand on one vambrace has him easing from his irrationality. His only grim platitude is Chuchi and Fox suffering the same difficulty through her grief on the other side of the room.

“For the dignity of my patient, please exit the room,” the droid instructs.

Cody wonders, looking around, if any of them are still all there behind the blank shock of their expressions.

* * *

The room is silent except for the hum of the hyperdrives singing beneath their feet. Bail Organa sits with Obi-Wan at the long conference table, either side of General Yoda and both with their heads in their hands in grief. Cody rocks baby Luke gently in his arms a comfortable distance away—he’d almost snapped at the med droids for taking too long when they’d finally offered the babies back—and tries to ignore the aching blade of worry and sadness driving deeper into his chest. The question that none of them wants to answer, let alone knows how, is what the hell they do now.

“Hidden, safe the children must be kept,” the General muses aloud.

“How do you mean?” Senator Chuchi asks, though her expression is pinched as if she fears the answer. Her hold on Leia is natural, easy, and though Fox refuses to go anywhere near the children, the little girl looks quite at home with her protector.

Obi-Wan lifts his chin from his hands and smiles weakly. “We must take them somewhere the Sith will not sense their presence, Senator. As they are, they may be in grave danger.”

The General hums croakily, nodding down at their reflections in the table surface. “Split up, they should be,” he says, and Cody’s grip tightens on the folds of blanket over Luke’s tiny side. He looks down at his doughy face, so different and yet similar to one of a recently-decanted cadet, and feels his brows draw together.

“My wife and I are in a good position to take the girl,” Organa offers. “Leia. We have been wanting children—a daughter. She would be safe and loved with us.”

“I don’t…” Chuchi makes a wounded noise. She gathers her bundle closer to her chest, running warm blue fingers over a head of brown hair.

“Riyo,” Fox murmurs, placing a hand on her shoulder and stroking gentle fingers there. “You can’t.”

“I know,” she says. Her eyes don’t leave the infant face before her. “I know, but… I just… _Padmé.”_

“Padmé,” Organa agrees solemnly. “She’d want her children safe, at least until we can unearth Skywalker.”

“And Captain Rex,” Obi-Wan says. When Cody looks over at him he’s staring off into the middle distance, somewhere far, far away from this little diplomatic ship. “They’ll come back for them, I know they will, even if they have to be extra careful of Sidious.”

“We just have to hold the fort until then,” Cody surmises, and his unused voice grates in his throat.

“Yes.” Obi-Wan rouses from his thoughts to smile softly at him. “Until then.”

“Taken to Tatooine, the boy should be. With his family there, safe he will be.” 

Cody’s gaze snaps to the old General, hardened instantly to a glare. He shifts the baby into his shoulder, warm through his blacks, and places one hand firmly across the span of his tiny back. Obi-Wan’s jaw drops open just barely as he too looks to the Grandmaster.

“Owen and Beru Lars?” he asks incredulously. “Do you really think they will want to take in the newborn child of an estranged step-brother as _farmers_ on Tatooine?”

General Yoda frowns and taps his gimmer stick against the underside of the table as his chair spins to face Obi-Wan. “Sympathy, they will have, for an orphaned child.”

Obi-Wan blinks, indignant. “Yet they are not _orphaned._ I see no reason to add another strain on their resources and hearts merely waiting out Anakin and Rex’s return.”

“Hhrmph,” the General grumbles. “Who else suggest you to take in the boy?”

Obi-Wan leans back in his seat. His hand goes to stroke his beard as it always does in thought or cleverly-disguised discomfort. Cody watches him weigh ideas against one another in his mind—what of, he could never say—and lets his cheek rest light on the crown of Luke’s head. For the first time he may have found true understanding in the Jedi tenet of rejecting attachment; whatever is decided for the boy, Cody just knows how much it’s going to hurt to have to let go.

“I will take him,” Obi-Wan decides. His voice is even, a tone not lacking in finality. He stares down General Yoda as if willing him to argue, and Cody loves him _so much._

“Hrmm,” the General says again, peering at Obi-Wan with narrowed eyes. “Taking on a child, think you can manage, Obi-Wan?”

“It’s not like I haven’t done so before,” he retorts, and—ouch. Okay. Cody feels his spine straighten to attention when Obi-Wan looks over to him, mischief in his eyes. “And I think my Commander is rather attached to his new vod’ika.”

At the other end of the room Fox snorts, and Senator Organa chuckles lightly. 

“Decided, it is,” the General says. “To Tatooine must you go, to conceal yourselves from the Sith.”

“And in case Anakin comes knocking on the Lars’ door,” Obi-Wan nods. He and Organa rise and bow to the General.

“Until the time is right, disappear we will,” he says, and the room begins to disperse.

Cody lets out a long breath as he leans against the wall of the corridor, bouncing Luke as he’s seen Chuchi do with Leia. She smiles at him as she passes on the way out, Fox sliding a hand down Cody’s shoulder and waiting until he nods an o-k.

“Are you going to be all right without us?” Cody asks him.

“I won’t be alone,” Fox corrects with a tilt of a smirk. “But yes. Go with your General. We’ll be fine.”

Cody looks at him. “Keep in touch, you hear?”

Fox grins and leans in to tap their foreheads together. “Of course, vod’ika. Anything for you.”

“Bastard,” Cody murmurs, but he smiles as he watches his brother disappear down the hall after his senator.

Obi-Wan steps out a few moments later looking star struck, startled and all-around perturbed. He takes a breath and closes his eyes as he releases it slowly, the same way Cody has watched him do time and time again both during battle and outside of it. When he opens them his gaze, casing the corridor, falls to rest on Cody. The corners of his eyes immediately soften, smiling at baby Luke as he snuffles gently in sleep. Beneath Luke’s hand, Cody’s heart flutters. 

“Sir?”

“I—oh, pardon me, Cody,” Obi-Wan says, suddenly remembering himself. “I’m sorry about what I said in there, jumping ahead to conclusions. I didn’t mean to presume—well. You’re free to do whatever you wish, of course, but if you ever wanted to visit, I thought it may be simpler if I…” 

Cody wets his lower lip and adjusts his hold on Luke again. “If I may, Obi-Wan?” Obi-Wan inclines his head, looking abashed. “Would you mind if I offered to help you look after him?”

“I’d be honoured,” Obi-Wan breathes. “And eternally grateful. You don’t have to accompany me if you truly don’t want to.”

Cody smiles and cannot bring himself to break away from that glittering seafoam gaze. “If it was welcome, sir, I would follow you to the edge of the galaxy itself.”

Obi-Wan seems to melt before him, reaching out to hold onto Cody’s arm in a steadying grip and brush his fingers over Luke’s cheek. “I’d like you to know, dearest, that you are always welcome with me.”

“Then the same should be said for you,” Cody replies. He tips forward on his toes, as much as he dares, and Obi-Wan does not move away. The crown of Cody’s brow comes to rest against his forehead and instead of pulling away he leans in, closer, and their breaths fan into the sliver of space left between them.

“Tatooine?” Cody murmurs.

“Tatooine,” Obi-Wan replies. “He’ll be safe there.”

Cody breathes a quiet laugh. “Somehow, with the trouble you attract, I doubt there’d be anywhere we’d truly be out of harm’s way.”

Against his cheek, Obi-Wan’s eyelashes flutter as he looks up to meet Cody’s eyes. “That’s what I have you for, my dear.”

“Of course,” he says. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come cry with me about these guys over on [tumblr!](https://silverxsakura.tumblr.com/)


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